A neighbour, who did not want to be named, said her son went out to help Abbott’s niece and the pair made the discovery.
Investigators fear she may have been killed for her diamond-encrusted Rolex. Her corgi had been shut in the bathroom for three days but survived.
The neighbour said: “We heard the niece banging on our door. She was hysterical.
“She [her niece] said: ‘I haven’t heard from my auntie in four days. Something’s wrong – break the door down’.
“My son ran out and broke the door down with an iron pole. She was wrapped in a blanket so nobody knew she had been stabbed at first.
“Her mouth was taped up. Prince, the corgi, was locked in the bathroom. The niece was on the phone talking to Jennifer’s son. What a terrible thing to find. You will never get that image out of your mind.”
‘She has done a lot of things in her life’
She said her neighbour was “mysterious, and very smart and intelligent”, adding: “We would chat in the street most of the time. I used to walk around the block with her with her dog,” she said.
“I can’t believe we won’t see her walking the corgi any more. She was very exuberant, very vivacious. She had done a lot of things in her life. She was a doctor, but she was also an actor and director in America. She’d directed a movie, and I looked at it on YouTube and saw her interviewed in Los Angeles.
“She was a character. She was lovely. You’re never going to see her again, and you just can’t take it in. I said to my son, ‘I can’t believe we were sitting here in the living room, maybe watching television, while she was over there going through that and we didn’t know’.”
Laura French, 34, said she was a friend of Abbott, whom she knew by her professional name, Sarah.
“She was a movie star,” the hairdresser said. “I used to walk her dog for her when she was ill. I wasn’t home on Friday.
“She used to live in Beverly Hills. She showed me a couple of her films on YouTube. She had one son whom she lost contact with.”
Another neighbour, who declined to be named, said screams were heard from her home at 5.30pm on Friday.
“I saw her every morning and afternoon when she was running with her dog,” the neighbour said. “You wouldn’t think she had any problems or issues.”
Angela Davis, 67, said: “I have been really upset. I am worried. I have been crying all day.
“Whoever killed her should be locked up.”
‘It is a shopping centre for drugs’
Ibeta Rostas, a retired cleaner, has lived on the road for 15 years with her husband Irnest Rostas, 55.
She said she had not seen Abbott for a week before she was found.
“Everybody is scared now,” the 56-year-old said. “Her niece found her. She came here after.
“She had called her many times and didn’t answer. She had a bad feeling. She came and, with a neighbour, broke the door down.”
Irnest Rostas, a retired painter, added: “It is not a safe area here. It is a shopping centre for drugs.
“We see the homeless with the drugs, but they are not here now – since the police are here, it has stopped. They would break our door down and sleep downstairs. They would use it as a toilet.”
The Metropolitan Police said a post-mortem examination was carried out on Sunday and gave the cause of death as sharp force trauma.
Chief Superintendent Jason Stewart said: “We are working closely with our colleagues in the homicide team to establish exactly what happened, and it’s incredibly important that we hear from anyone who may have knowledge about how this awful death occurred.”
No arrests have been made.
